


and your heart speaks better than your mouth does

by slutpuff (rxdxctxd)



Series: Tales From The Devil's Nest [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: (it’s greed), Age Regression, Aromantic Character, Gen, Greed's POV; 2nd person, Hurt/Comfort, Implied CSA; Stated Emotional and Physical Abuse, Non-sexual Kink For the Traumatised Soul: discussed but not practiced, PTSD, Past Abuse Mention, Past Assault Implied, Past Incest Implied, Queerplatonic relationship, Trauma, greed uses too many nicknames and most suck - freeform, in between platonic and queerplatonic during this fic so I’m only using the ampersand tag, past rape implied, references to queerplatonic greed/dolcetto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 10:29:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20526524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rxdxctxd/pseuds/slutpuff
Summary: The others had elected to leave her alone —they might have even been asked to. But you were bad at not making yourself everyone else's problem, so you weren't going to do that.Or, Greed forces a conversation he knows he’ll suck at having because it’s what he knows Martel needs, and he takes good care of his possessions (read: friends).





	and your heart speaks better than your mouth does

**Author's Note:**

> Please do mind the tags, but nothing is more graphic than tagged for, which is to say nothing is graphic. It’s all them talking in Martel’s room. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy, kudos and comments always appreciated.

You knew your subordinates.

You knew their habits, their hopes, their dreams. And you knew their greed as well as your own. 

And greed, was something you knew very well. 

It was late, even for a bar, and the last of the patrons had left almost an hour ago. Dolcetto was asleep in your bed, and Roa was outside. But your focus, right now, was on Martel. She'd seemed off when she had slipped away for the night, no smirk, no comment, no smile. The others had elected to leave her alone —they might have even been asked to. But you were bad at not making yourself everyone else's problem, so you weren't going to do that, and instead you make your way to her room and step inside.

"Hey," you start, waving as you stand in the open door. "I think I've got a rat problem in the storage, you got any friends that are hungry?"

You give her a big grin as she looks up at you, and even though she looks like hell, she gives a weak one back.

"Shame, tonight was a half-off special at the pub. You should have told me before they all went for mice."

Her voice is meek and she can't meet your eye, but she responded in turn to your comment, so you step the rest of the way inside and close the door behind you.

There were a lot of unspoken laws between you. When you could flirt, how you could do it, how you could touch her, and when to let her handle her fights herself. But nothing was as sacredly kept as your unspoken pact to never say exactly what you meant when someone else might hear. Everything was said in remarks like these —comments, jokes. Never direct.

But behind closed doors, it was different. Anything was fair game. And tonight, it was about time you talked. 

"You know," you begin, "I've known you so many times it hurts."

She moves to say something, but you hold up your hand.

"Not right now, peach." you say softly. "Let me finish."

She closes her mouth and sits patiently. Her face looks like something you'd usually never see in her, but you can't place it. The rest of her looks like hell. Her hair, the short cut growing out shaggily as she waits for her next cut, stray hairs jutting to all sides, the redness around her eyes, the dullness in how she held herself. It was hard to look at.

"Your type is everywhere, you know." 

You pull out your lighter and box of cigarettes and pull one out, then offer the box to Martel. She declines.

"I've been knowing you since I met my first humans. Yous have been around since people invented getting hurt." you say, lighting your cigarette. You take a long drag and let the smoke swirl in your lungs before slowly letting it out, letting the pause add emphasis. "You don't have to be so strong all the time, you know."

She goes to protest —and you knew she would, because you know she knows but you know that she knows that you know that she would rather eat her entire skin than admit to knowing that— but you hold up your hand to signal again that you weren't through and you needed her to just listen.

The defiant look leaves her eyes as she meets yours, and you resist laughing at yourself. You must have a real sad look for them to tame your snake so fast. But alas. You probably did.

You tap ash off your cig into the tray on the dresser that must be in here just for you, because it's got what's left of four of your smokes from the last two or three weeks and not much else.

"We all want somethin', doll." you sigh. "That's our biggest strength, weakness, virtue, sin, and flaw. Can lead us well, or be our ruin; push us to greatness or drive us mad tryin'... Everyone wants something."

Her expression ticks up just a tiny bit. She's heard this song before.

"Greed's not good or bad; it's left to how it's handled." she recites. It's definitely recitation; you phrased it identically about a week and a half ago to a guy that really, really wasn't worth the effort. She was probably latching onto the familiarity to comfort herself.

"Everyone in the world is greedy." you continue. You're actually a little shocked at how on-rails this is going, how inflexible your speech is, and how hard you're trying to maintain the illusion that this is something easy for you to discuss, as if it's just you giving a philosophical seminar on the nature of greed, like you were often wont to do. She'd have to be real far gone to believe it, but you keep the act regardless. That was for _your_ comfort. 

You find yourself wishing you'd had a drink or three before coming to do this. This wasn't the sort of discussion that you wanted to be trashed before having to talk about, like the last conversation you'd had where Martel cried, the first time you'd ever seen her _break_, the moment you knew that _this_ conversation was going to have to happen. This wouldn't be like that, the big dam had already broke. But now she faced the aftermath, and you weren't interested in letting her face that alone. And between the pain you would see in her and the people you were already remembering, you think that maybe, perhaps, a drink or three wouldn't have been a bad idea.

Well, hindsight's twenty-twenty, and all that. 

You breathe out a cloud of smoke with a sigh and prop your arms on your knees. If you let yourself, you'd be saying the same shit in circles until dawn comes and Dolcetto's scratching at your door to be let out (read: find out why you never came to bed). You needed to just get on with it.

"You're greedy too, Mar." you say finally, recomposing the words in your head as if they wouldn't be gone within moments. "Do you know how?"

Now you allow her to speak, and at first she hesitates, thinking perhaps. Her eyes wander as she thinks, and a stroke of genius enlightens you enough to realise that the air about her that you couldn't recognise before is youth. She seems....young. Not the adult you were used to —though you _could_ still see her just below the surface. The surface, which you just realised you recognise as the unmistakable expression of a child that has been terribly, horribly hurt.

Martel reaches a decision of what to say.

"We're all greedy." she says plainly. "I'm not any different."

You smile lightly. That's a no, spoken like a yes. It wasn't helpful, but she did give you a nice transition.

"That's exactly why we need to talk, babygirl. You're not different at all. Come're."

You snuff out your cigarette in the ashtray and leave it, situating yourself to sit comfortably against the wall that was flush to the bed. You raise an arm to invite her to sit beside you with your arm around her. She usually wouldn't be particularly interested, but this was not a usually kind of night. Sure enough, she takes it.

"I've known a lot of humans over the years." you begin. "You're all greedy, and I like that; helps us get along. You all have your own specific greeds that're the crux of your beings, just like the concept itself is mine. They're as varied as y'all are, too, y'know? Lots of different things people live their lives trying to get. But there are some that I've seen a lot, and yours is one of those."

You pause for a moment, regretting snuffing your smoke, and turn to meet Martel's eye.

"Mar, baby, do you know why you try so hard to be strong all the time?"

You watch a dozen emotions flash over her face as she starts to grasp the point of the conversation, from fear to stress to apprehension to general tenseness and finally acceptance. She hesitates as she holds your gaze, the childlike expression switched with her common steely gaze, her eyes studying you in a way that she hasn’t done since you’d broken her free from the lab she was in. 

“Enlighten me.” she says in a carefully steady voice, and you realise that the two of you were dancing again. She was trying to glimpse your hand in the game. Carefully holding hers from view, trying to keep control of the situation. You feel what a human might describe as your heart turning, a twisting sensation in your chest, regret for the fact that she would have to hurt for this conversation to work. She would have to strip herself down, deeper than skin or muscle or tissue or bone, to a form rawer than she’d ever exposed, probably to anyone, and perhaps even to herself. It wasn’t going to be comfortable for her to see your hand in this game, the request it would make of her. But it was a hand that she needed desperately to see, and that you needed to show to her.

You lightly rub circles into her back and pause to think again. 

Your words were coming hard, and this was easily the most poorly executed greed speech you’ve ever given. You were used to telling about it, not conversing. It’s not like the information was the problem —you knew what you were talking about; you were the world’s leading expert; a monument of knowledge; Greed, PhD— it was the context. You could talk about the nature of desire and all the things that come with it all day long with no difficulty.What you could not do...was use it to forward a conversation with heavy emotional elements, which you weren’t too great at handling in the first place. Trying to structure the conversation like this wasn’t working.

“Alright, Mart’.” You shift around to face her. “I’m sorry, but I’m really no good at this.”

Even in all of her apprehension, she snorts. A light smile pokes at your cheeks, and you continue on.

“I’m no good at these sort of talks, and I’m not great at comforting either, but I’m gonna ask that you please bear with me because this is important, even if I can’t get it brought up right. So I’m just gonna tell it all in a line and stop trying, because it doesn’t matter how you hear it if it still gets heard. That okay?”

You wait for an answer, and again, her expression shifts. It’s as if she can’t keep it straight and steady, like she doesn’t know what to do in this situation or how to feel, and you realise that yeah, she probably doesn’t. She’s probably never had this problem since she started building up her walls; hell, Dolcetto said that prior to the last time —the first time— you’d seen her break, he’d never even once seen her falter. Not during the war, not when she was injured, not when she was chimerised, not during their time in the lab, and not during the stress that was involved when a certain hardheaded maniac (you wager he couldn’t have been _that_ crazy) broke into the lab and busted them out and led them on a journey practically a quarter of the way around the country. She was strong, undeniably so. Probably to her own detriment.

Eventually she nods, and you decide to first relight your cigarette, if for no other reason than to give you an excuse to pause and get your thoughts in order every so often. You shouldn’t have snuffed it in the first place.

“Okay,” you announce. “I’m gonna cut to the chase and just lay it all out. You’re greedy for strength, you crave more and more and you can’t get enough, and baby, you never will. I’ve been knowing yous since before you were born, people with the same desires, the same desperate wants, because your situation is miserably un-unique. Mart’, I have to tell you this, and it’ll sound obvious, but I know I have to say it and I know you need to hear it, because people like you always do. It’s the fact of the matter, it’s not your fault, but if you ignore it, it’s gonna crush ya. Baby, no matter how strong you get, you can’t go back to whatever happened to you and be stronger back then, and you can’t change the world so that it never happened.”

You take a drag from your cigarette, and watch the storm of expressions cycle across Martel’s face. It was the reaction you had expected. It was the reaction most people had. She speaks.

“...How did you know?” she says. You breathe out a slow train of smoke and sigh.

“Like I said, Mar. Your situation is miserably, miserably un-unique. It’s been happening since before you, before me, before my older siblings, and before my dad, too. The only thing about it that changes is the thing that people want to undo.”

You can’t prevent the sudden sadness that drops on you now and you curse under your breath. So much for keeping your own shit under wraps. You don’t know why you thought you’d be able to do this without hurting over past friends. Past companions. Past Martels, each trying with all their might to defeat the truth of what happened to them. Each failing, always, to the bitter end. 

“Listen, Mar.” you say. You don’t bother to mask what you’re feeling; perhaps it’d do her good to see. She was sharp; perhaps she’d infer what you refuse to say on her own. “I don’t know what happened to you. I won’t know unless you tell me; I don’t have some kind of mind-reading ability —hell, not even my dad can do that— and I wouldn’t breach your privacy even if I did. What I do know, though, is how your type works, and how it plays out. I’ve known so many that were just like you. They were my friends, and I’ve kept their secrets for decades, and I’ll keep them until I finally kick it for real, ‘cuz I’m taking ’em to the grave, and I’ll do the same for you. This shit is breaking you to hold for so long, doll. Please let me carry it awhile.”

There, that was good. You’d gotten it out, and it maybe even sounded alright. At the very least, Martel didn’t immediately start crying, and she doesn’t look angry; there’s at least that. She looks...

Sad.

Somber, perhaps. Her eyes seem impossibly young and old at the same time, and are glazed over like she isn’t even remotely present. Yet, the expression she wears says the opposite.She looks like she’s somewhere else —and she also looks like she is doing nothing but considering the terms of what you said.

An eternity of silence passes between you, you waiting, your idle cigarette burning until it wears itself down so far that it snuffs its embers on the flesh of your fingers. You watch her, you study the room, you reflect on all the times you’ve done this before. You remember the grief of friends come and passed, you think on all the things you’ll never let reach the light of day. So many secrets dwell within you; so many secrets will die with you. That is your word —and you keep to your word. You always keep your word.

Martel makes a small sound like throat clearing and your attention snaps back to her as she bites her lip nervously, lightly rocking. Hyping herself up, you think. A few long moments pass, and she speaks.

“You won’t tell anyone?”

Her voice comes out oddly raspy and you shake your head.

“Not a soul. I don’t lie. I’ll take anything you tell me to the grave, and if life finds me again and you still want me to, I’ll take it to the next grave too.”

She lets her eyes meet yours and she looks so _scared_. Not of you, no, but she looks terrified and you can spot the trembling in her hands even as she tries to keep it hidden.

“You _can’t_ tell.” she says quietly, firmly. You can’t even tell if she’s truly talking to you, but you answer anyway. 

“I never will, peach. Never will.” You reach out and, feeling like you’re walking a limb like a tightrope, take her hand in yours, rubbing the back of it gently. “I’m never going to hurt you or betray your trust, I won’t ever give you a reason to cry sad tears, and I won’t ever tell anyone anything you don’t want me to.”

To your surprise, she doesn’t reject your hand on hers. Instead, she stares at it, almost like it’s completely alien to her, and the youthful quality in her eyes surfaces again. Just for a moment though, because moments later she blinks, long and slow, and goes back to her usual self.

“Please sit with me again.” she says after yet another long silence. “I’ll talk about it. But please, it can only be between us.”

“Of course.”

You re-situate yourself beside her and take her in your arm and hold her hand, and she presses her body firmly against yours, sending a pang of....something directly through your stomach and into your chest. She really was never like this. You’re a physical person, you like contact, and you especially like it with your little group. You pet Dolcetto thoroughly daily; you carry Bido in your arms the way a farm girl might tote around a pet chicken. Even Roa you managed some physical affection with. But in this single night, in the short time you’d been in this room, you feel like you’ve perhaps achieved more touch with her than you’ve managed in the last month or so, maybe more. 

“Okay.” she says, voice wavering as she hyped herself up. “I’ve...never talked about this. It’s going to be kind of here and there, I think. What do you know about me? It’ll help to know where we’re starting; dog-boy’s surely told you something.”

You shake your head.

“Sorry, sweetbee; he hasn’t said anything. I don’t know jack, actually. I figured you would tell me in your own time.”

She actually laughs at this for some reason you can’t figure. She rubs her cheek against your chest.

“I guess that’s tonight then, huh.” she muses.

She shifts a little in place, tucking her legs against you in a way that can’t be comfortable, but then again maybe can be when you’re a snake.

“Alright, Boss,” she begins. “This is gonna be a long one, so I hope you’re comfy.”

“I was born in a mining town, over towards the north-east. Was a nice place, really. I liked it there. My mother was a miner, and she talked about me to the other miners so much that they all knew me. That was most the town, you know. I was really the town’s kid. Everyone loved me.”

A smile grows on her face as she talks, but her eyes stay sad.

“My mother was really good to me. She let me play ‘mining’ with her; we’d sit outside and bang tools on rocks all day, because I wanted to be just like her. Even though she did that every day that she worked, she still would do it with me when she didn’t. She taught me about rocks and how to find neat ones. She celebrated with me even when all I’d done was chip a rock off of a bigger rock with my little pickaxe —which she got just for me; she commissioned it from the smith for my fifth birthday. She made the best snacks, and always made time for me, and all my fondest memories are covered in smears of coal and little black handprints. She was a good mom.”

She stops, her eyes welling up despite her smile. She grabs for your shirt only to be reminded it exists as a part of your body, and wipes them off on her arm instead.

“Somethin’ happened, huh?” you say. 

You didn’t need to say it. You could’ve gone without. Would’ve, and perhaps you should’ve, because now that it’s out of your mouth it sounds dumb at best and uncomfortably direct or offensive at worst.

The smile fades from Martel’s face and she laughs weakly.

“Yeah,” she mumbles. “‘Somethin’’ sure did.”

A bit of silence ensues as you watch her pull herself together, and you were supposed to be the wall for her here, but you wonder if whatever did such a number on her wouldn’t do the same on you.

Martel sighs loudly.

“Well. I might as well shoot us down quickly; it’s bad from here on. She died.”

You nod. You had figured as much.

“She got trapped in a cave-in. Not sure if she died of injury or lack of water or CO2 or what. It took too long to dig her out.” she continued. “I was eight then.”

You don’t say anything. You know Martel would feel no comfort in apologies of sympathy, and you had no clue how to respond otherwise. This wasn’t your strong suit —that point was being hammered in over and over. Luckily, Martel wasn’t waiting for you, and she continued without your comment.

“They had to send a telegram to my dad. He travelled a lot then. It took a couple weeks for him to finally make his way back. The town took good care of me ‘til then; god I wish it could have just stayed that way. I hate that man. To call him a swine is an insult to pigs.”

She balls up her fist, but there’s no anger in her words, no anger in her body. She sounds and feels hollow and dull, and you can tell that her hands are trembling. Even now, with someone who knows it’s a front, she’s still trying to project an image of strength, and you realise, sadly, that it’s for herself.

“Hey, it’s alright.” you say softly, rubbing her shoulder gently. This time, words come natural. “Nothin’s here but me okay? And there’s no rush, you can go slowly if it’s hard.”

She shakes her head and rubs her eyes.

“No; no, Greed. I have to just get it out or I won’t do it. It’s just hard to actually say it.”

You shrug your shoulders.

“Then don’t.” You offer it up like an obvious solution. “Tell me some other way.”

Martel bites her lip and looks away, as far as her eyes could be from yours; that’s where she put them. 

“He’s my father, I’m a girl, and he never hit me.” she mutters. “Do the math.”

Now. You kind of suck at math. Primary school children can add and subtract circles around you because you never went to school and Father never taught you; math wasn’t really a source of pride for you. But this math you could do just fine.

You draw her closer to you, a pit growing in your stomach as the understanding blooms in you like the world’s most noxious flower. 

“I understand.” you say, and on some level you wish you didn’t.

“I know.” she says hollowly, and those two words must have been the last that her near bottomless well of strength could take, because then second the words leave her mouth she bursts into tears and you panic. 

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s alright, everything’s okay, it’s—“ You babble on reassurances, wipe tears, push back hair, stroke her cheeks; you do and say so much on autopilot that you forget each action seconds later. But the crying pushed on and devolved into full-blown sobs.

“A guy at the bar called me ‘kitten’ tonight.” she says, laughing sadly through tears. “Flirted with me and called me ‘kitten’. And that’s what’s got me all messed up like this, just a dumb pet name. I’m pathetic.”

You shake your head. You’d have to ask more about the guy later, for uh, business purposes, but for now;

“You’re not pathetic, Mar.” you scoff. “You’ve never been pathetic in your life. And if it upsets you, it’s not dumb.”

You run your fingers through her cropped hair. She’s choking from the lack of oxygen her sobs were causing and you wish you had a better solution than patting and rubbing and holding and wiping tears, but you don’t, and you just keep on guessing and playing it by ear. 

Martel wipes her face against her forearm. 

“He used to call me that, all the time. Kitten, Kit-tel, his little kitty. Being a snake now, they all feel like the furthest things from logical that he could’ve called me. Looking back on it feels so strange and foreign; it’s like a whole other life. If it didn’t hurt so damn bad, I might think it was.”

Her words feel defeated, lost. But on this note, at least, you could relate. You know that foreignness —well. 

“That’s what it’s like thinkin’ about when I still lived with Dad and my siblings.” you say, looking down to meet her eyes. She’s paying close attention —she knows you don’t talk much about those times. You don’t like to. But it felt right to do that now. She was offering up her rawest self, and it was time to cast your lot in with hers. She deserved to know something in return.

“I did some real bad shit then, Mar.” you start. The thought of those times puts a bitter taste in your mouth. “It was just me, Dad, Lust, and Pride back then. I was a baby.”

You chuckle.

“As much of a baby as you can be looking exactly like I do now, anyway.”

You let go of Martel’s hand and start carding your fingers through her hair. It was a habit you formed with Dol; it soothes you when feelings start tangling in your chest. And sure, people don’t tend to pet snakes, but yours was soft and warm and you needed to. Not to mention that judging from her response, she needed it too.

You continue.

“I was fresh out of Dad, then. Born from his head like that Cretan goddess. Or Aerugonian? I actually don’t know which claimed her, now that I think about it. They were one country then. But whichever it is; just like her.

“I was new, is the point, and I was Daddy’s Boy back then, and it feels as odd to me as your childhood does to you. I think back and wonder how I ever could live there. How I managed to live being put down and injured by my brother and sister. How I somehow stayed there with them, doing what they wanted, doing things _I_ _didn’t want to_, not just for days or weeks but damn near a hundred years.”

You swallow hard. Even now, after so long —perhaps _because_ it’s been so long— you feel the answer scraping and clawing and peeling you from the inside out. You sigh heavily.

“It’s so stupid to me now, how pointless my reason was. I had just wanted approval, to make Dad happy. Wanted him to love me and all that crap.” You scoff at your own words. “I wasted a hundred years pursuing my greed for _that_. As if I’d ever get it.”

Martel breaks back out into small, restrained sobs as you finish your sentence and as the entire conversation flashes through your head in the span of a second, you’re smacked in the face with understanding and _wow_, you’d just been a dumbass. Maybe also a jackass. Probably some other asses, but you don’t know them all.

“You too, huh.” you say softly. “Come’re.”

You slide one arm under her legs and lift her up so you you can lay down on the bed. She weighs nothing to you, and so you effortlessly manoeuvre and set her down squarely in the middle of your chest. Your hands return to her back and hair respectively, and you press her against you, wishing that somehow, if you could just hold her tighter, closer, you could make it all better.

“I’m sorry, doll, I—“

She cuts you off before you can get the rest of your apology out, shaking her head in a way not unlike a child in a tantrum.

“No, no, you’re _right_.” she forces out. She bites her lip to weather the emotions that are violently trying to escape from her eyeballs and she grabs at her hair, gritting her teeth. She looks like she’s using all her strength to keep from turning inside out, and you’re not sure how she looks that way, but she does all the same.

“Babygirl, baby,” you say in attempt to soothe, you rub her back as you hold her tight against you, murmuring more of the same, and after a few moments all the strain and effort falls away. You could see it happen, her face relaxing and the painfully restrained tears finally falling without protest. She cries, really cries; pure unadulterated grief that had been bottled up for damn near twenty years pooling on your chest. 

You make no move to stop it, and just continue to run your hand through her hair. She needed this; she would speak when she was ready, and it wasn’t your place to interrupt her here. She was raw, open, vulnerable. You didn’t need to impose and insert yourself now. Who knows if or when she’d let herself be this way again. It wasn’t something you were interested in chancing.

So for once in your life, you keep your mouth shut and let her take her time. 

Awhile later —minutes? More?— she lays her head down on your chest and presses her palm flat against it. 

“I just wanted to make him happy, Greed.” she cries. The words are sad and slurred with sobs. “I just wanted him to love me, I just wanted to be important, and he wanted me to be like Mami and I wanted to be _just_ like her, but not like that, Greed, not like that...”

Her voice trails off as she cries more, and you pet her hair. You should talk now, you think, but as always, the words come hard. A lot of bad things had happened to you in your years, there were many tragedies you understood deeply, but this was one you could never relate to. 

“I know.” you whisper. You rack your brain, for something, anything that would be good for her to hear.

A moment passes, and with a passing thought, you know.

“You didn’t deserve that.” you say after a bit. You’re sure she already knows. “It wasn’t your fault, it shouldn’t have happened, he shouldn’t have done that to you. You were just a kid. His kid.”

You rub tears from her cheek and tuck her long strand of hair behind her ear.

Just a kid.

Maybe you could relate a bit after all. 

You spend awhile saying small comforts and stroking her hair, wiping her cheeks, rubbing her back. You have the unshakeable feeling that the person you’re holding is the true Martel, the girl beneath all her layers of snark and wit and confidence, the girl usually defended by all the strength she displayed. This was _Martel_. She looked extraordinarily small and frail.

You wonder what, beneath all of your projected traits, you might look like.

“You’re...shaped like him.” she says without warning, her small voice ringing through your ears as if it were a foghorn. You frown.

“Does my body upset you?” you ask. You’re concerned, not offended.

But she shakes her head, dispelling that feeling (mostly) as she moves her palm to the dead center of your chest. She studies it, but for what, you’re unsure.

“It’s...nice actually.” she says softly. 

Martel presses her face into your chest and you hold her tighter. 

“I miss him.” she adds.

The statement kind of tears you up inside. Not just because of how _awful_ it is to long for a worse time or bad person, but because of how disgustingly familiar the sentiment is. You miss your family constantly. The nicer ones and the meaner ones. Even Dad. You’d never go back if you could help it, but the feeling....that was still there, and it was horribly tenacious. So you built your own family. And tried to keep the other out of mind.

“I can be him for you.” you blurt out, and you manage to catch yourself off-guard with a thought you hadn’t been aware you were thinking. “If— If you want.”

Even you’re not sure entirely what the fuck you just volunteered for, and you kind of feel like you just smoked the wrong end of a lit cigarette and got a mouthful of ash, but you don’t know how you’d back out of it now. It wasn’t something you were against doing if she wanted, but damn you would’ve liked some warning before being thrust down this path by your own hand.

“Be...my papa?”

You give a sheepish smile.

“I can be...uh...a version of him for you, if you wanted. Like, your papa but safe. Your papa but everything he does is on your terms and when you want him gone he’s gone and I’m just Greed and I’m just your boss, and you never worry about him again. I... understand missing someone. I don’t want you to miss him. And I want you to...” You trail off, realising that you’ve cornered yourself in a phrase where you have to acknowledge what she’s doing. “Well, you seem like...sometimes you maybe need a parent or your papa or something vaguely adjacent.”

She bites her lip, staring at you and clearly thinking about it. She pushes her face further against your chest and you strain a little to be able to hear her muffled voice. Fresh tears find their way to your skin again.

“Please...please.” she says, repeating herself again and again, and when you manage to understand her you wrap both your arms around her small frame.

“Of course, baby.” you murmur, and you lean forward to kiss the top of her head.

You hadn’t been expecting the night to transpire the way it had. You hadn’t expected to learn what you did. You had expected to have to deal with stuff you didn’t know what to do with, but not necessarily with such..._gravity_ in the context.

You spend the rest of the night in Martel’s room that night; you’d have to make it up to Dol in the morning, and you know you won’t be able to explain much. But he knows you, and trusts you, and knows that if you say you were needed elsewhere, that that’s what happened. 

And tonight, you were needed elsewhere. 

Time passes and Martel eventually falls asleep on your chest. Small peaceful snores rumble softly from her and she looks more at rest than you think you’ve ever seen her. 

Yeah, you were needed elsewhere.


End file.
